City of Djinns

by William Dalrymple

  By 1792 it had already become impossible for anyone with even one Indian parent to receive a commission in the East India Company army. So, although he had been brought up in an English school in British Calcutta, the eighteen-year-old James Skinner was forced to leave westernized Bengal and accept service in the army of the Company’s principal rivals in India.

  During the course of the eighteenth century, the Hindu Mahratta confederacy had extended its power over much of the subcontinent, from the fastness of the Deccan to the borders of the fertile Punjab. One reason for the Mahrattas’ success had been their skilful use of European and Eurasian mercenaries. Skinner was quickly welcomed into their ranks and before long was even permitted to raise his own irregular cavalry force.

  For seven years he fought a series of battles in Rajasthan and Haryana using military techniques that were virtually unchanged since mediaeval times. Although one of Skinner’s cousins was, at the same time, founding the modern Bombay Chamber of Commerce, two hundred miles away in the deserts of North-West India, the rhythms of warfare followed much the same course as they did in the campaigns depicted in the miniatures of the great Mughal manuscripts: sieges of Chittor and the vast forts of Rajputana were interspersed with intrigues, ambushes and charges of heavily armoured cavalry.

  Reading Skinner’s Military Memoirs, you sometimes become confused as to which century Skinner is describing. One of Skinner’s typical anecdotes relates how, in the Battle of Malpura, his regiment managed to kill the richly caparisoned war elephant of the Maharaja of Jaipur. Seeing this the Maharajah’s massed troops fled in panic, leaving Skinner’s Horse to plunder the camp. ‘I marched into the encampment,’ wrote Skinner. ‘It was the largest and best I had ever seen but was totally deserted. Here were the most beautiful tents, and large bazaars, filled with everything imaginable ... The Rajah’s wooden bungalow was covered with embroidery and crimson velvet. I entered and saw nothing but gold and silver.’ The scene has echoes of the Crusades; yet the setting is the nineteenth, not the twelfth century.

  Skinner’s spectacular career in the ranks of the Mahrattas was, however, brought to an abrupt close. In 1803 the great Confederacy prepared to take on the British. Despite their proven loyalty, Skinner and the other Anglo-Indians in the Mahrattas’ service were summarily dismissed and given only twenty-four hours to quit Mahratta territory. Just as Skinner’s mixed blood had barred him from the Company army, so the same disability came to block his career in the ranks of their rivals; his birth acted, as James Fraser put it, ‘like a two-edged blade, made to cut both ways against him’. Although Skinner’s Horse was still ineligible to join the British army, Lord Lake, the British Commander in North India, eventually permitted the troop to fight as an irregular unit under the Company flag. Their job was to act as mounted guerrillas: to scout ahead of the main force; to harass a retreating enemy; to cut supply lines and to perform covert operations behind Mahratta lines.

  In the years that followed there were several humiliating rebuffs by the British establishment: Skinner’s estates, given to him by the Mahrattas, were revoked; his pay and rank were limited; the size of his regiment cut by a third. It was only much later, after a series of astonishing victories over the Sikhs and the Gurkhas, that Skinner’s Horse was officially absorbed into the Company army and Skinner made a Lieutenant Colonel and a Companion of the Bath.

  William Fraser remained the regiment’s second-in-command, and appropriately it was William’s brother James who edited and translated (from their original Persian) Skinner’s Military Memoirs. James also looked after Skinner’s children in the holidays when they came to Edinburgh to receive their education. Yet even here Skinner was to be humiliated. On his return home James married his cousin, Jane Tytler. Brought up entirely in Scotland, Jane had no love for or interest in India and she certainly did not want her house full of Skinner’s ‘half-castes’.

  The message got back to Delhi. In his last letter to Moniack, Skinner thanked his friend for looking after his ‘poor black children’, but adds that James should not go to see them again as he knew James’s wife harboured ‘a great aversion to children of that description’. Seeking comfort in religion, Skinner wrote that he could now only trust in ‘Him who gave them birth, where I hope black or white will not make much difference before His presence.’

  Even in the home of his closest friend, Skinner was unable to escape the growing colour prejudice of the British.

  In the Spanish Americas it was military heroes of mixed Indian and colonial parentage - men like Bolivar - who came to dominate and rule the colonies. But India was different. As Skinner’s career demonstrated, Hindus and British were both too proud of their blood for ‘half-castes’ ever to be really successful. As the nineteenth century progressed, such horrible prejudice only increased. Any hint of ’black blood’ brought out the worst of Victorian bigotry, and in Delhi, Skinner’s children became the butt of snide British jokes.

  ‘The whole [Skinner] family was a marvellous revelation to anyone fresh from England,’ wrote Emily Bayley sometime in the 1870s. ‘[They] were very dark in complexion and spoke English with an extraordinary accent ... although they looked upon themselves as English people and held a prominent position in Delhi society, they had very little education and were more native than English in their ways ...

  ‘[Joe Skinner] was a marvellous creation ... his visiting dress consisted of a green coat with gilt buttons, claret coloured trousers, patent leather boots, white waistcoat and necktie. He always carried a gold-mounted Malacca cane and talked of the time when he was in the Guards, though he has never been out of India ... [His] children are named after the Royal Family, but are all black.’

  The Skinners remained in Delhi, filling first the pews, then the graveyard of St James‘s, the great mustard-coloured church which Sikander Sahib built late in his life next to his haveli in Shahjehanabad.

  The Skinners at least had some place in Delhi society, but year by year things only became more difficult for most other Anglo-Indians. Increasingly they came to suffer the worst racial prejudices of both Indians and British: the Indians refused to mix with them; and despite their fierce and unwavering loyalty to the Union Jack, the English rigidly excluded them from their clubs and drawing-rooms. Behind their backs they were cruelly ridiculed as ‘chee- chees’, ‘Blackie Whities’ or ’Chutney Marys‘. They were given the railways and the telegraphs to look after and achieved some modest prosperity, but they remained effectively ostracized by both rulers and ruled. As Independence approached, an idea was mooted for an Eurasian homeland - a kind of Anglo-Indian Israel - in the Chote Nagpur hills in southern Bihar; but the scheme never came to anything and MacLuskie Ganj, the putative Tel Aviv of the homeland, today lies desolate and impoverished, little more than a rundown and outsize old folks’ home.

  Realizing there was no longer any secure place for them in India, the Anglo-Indians emigrated en masse. Some 25,000 made new homes in America, Canada and Australia, where their hockey team, the Harlequins, gained brief celebrity. Many more emigrated to England. There, ‘back home’, their distinct character became lost in the post-war melting pot; some, like Engelbert Humperdinck (born Gerald Dorsey from Madras) and Cliff Richard (born Harry Webb, the son of an Anglo-Indian train driver from Lucknow) became famous - though not until they had thrown away their old names and identities like a set of unwanted and unfashionable clothes.

  The rump who had remained in India - the optimistic, the old or the nostalgic — stayed on in the face of some Indian resentment, and an increasing degree of poverty. The younger generation, especially the girls, tended to intermarry and were able to blend in; but others, particularly the older ones, found it hard to change their ways.

  St James’s Church

  I heard about two households of retired Anglo-Indians in Old Delhi. As chance would have it, their bungalows lay in a small back street only a stone’s throw away from the site of the great neo-classical mansion Skinner built for himself during
the twilight of the Mughals, the Anglo-Indian’s forgotten heyday.

  ‘It was the lavatories that did it. They were the final straw.’

  ‘That’s right. The lavatories.’

  ‘They put in Indian ones.’

  ‘His daughter and my son. Our own children.’

  ‘You’ve got to draw the line somewhere.’

  ‘That you have.’

  ‘There’s not one of those Indian lavatories you can sit on properly.’

  ‘And one thing I’ll never do is squat on my haunches.’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Not on my haunches.’

  ‘You’ve got to draw the line somewhere.’

  Henry Smith and Bert Brown were sitting outside on Mr Brown’s veranda when I went to see them. Despite the incipient evening chill, they were both sipping cold ginger beer. Mr Brown made it himself, with a Boots kit brought back by his son Thomas from a trip to England.

  Mr Smith and Mr Brown are related now, by marriage: Mr Smith’s Thomas is married to Mr Brown’s Edith. Driven out by their children’s plumbing, they have taken shelter side by side in two old-fashioned English-style bungalows. During the day they tend their gardens, pruning their roses and straightening the hollyhocks. Each evening they meet for a drink on Mr Brown’s veranda. There they talk about the steam trains they used to drive between Lucknow and Calcutta.

  ‘I always say you can’t beat a train for seeing a country,’ said Mr Jones removing his heavy black glasses and cleaning them on the bottom edge of his shirt.

  ‘Aye, that’s right,’ agreed Mr Smith. ‘Up on the fender. There’s nothing like it.’

  ‘It was a good healthy life on the railways. Plenty of fresh air.’

  ‘Have you visited the Taj Mahal?’ asked Mr Smith turning to me. ‘That’s a lovely place, the Taj Mahal.’

  ‘Up on the fender you get to know a place,’ continued Mr Brown.

  ‘The languages,’ said Mr Smith, ‘the people, the habits ...’

  ‘And they’re a fascinating people, the Indians. I’ll say that for them.’

  ‘I’ve always had friendly relations with them, mind. It’s their country. That’s what my father always used to say.’

  ‘That’s right. The Indians are a nice people. Provided you treat them as human beings.’

  ‘Treat them as you would expect to be treated. That’s my motto.’

  ‘But they never could drive trains, in my experience. Those new diesel ones perhaps. But not the old steam trains.’

  ‘A bit too laz ... sleepy, some of them Indian drivers. With all due respect.’

  ‘You have to be awake on a steam train.’

  ‘Always something to do. Never time to be idle.’

  ‘That’s where we came in. The Anglo-Indians. The locomotives were our responsibility. If anything went wrong we could mend it. Do it up and get it moving.’

  I asked Mr Smith and Mr Brown whether they had ever wanted to emigrate, but they both shook their heads.

  ‘My brothers are both in England,’ said Mr Smith. ‘The eldest went in 1953 and the youngest followed in ’63. Still I said: “No. I am not going.”‘

  ‘But if your brothers have all gone ...’

  ‘This is my home,’ said Mr Smith. ‘I grew up here. I’m happier here than what I would’ve been had I gone anywhere foreign.’

  ‘Do the Indians accept that this is your home?’

  ‘Sometimes the people this side are inclined to be a bit rough,’ said Mr Brown. ‘They never tell us: “Go back home to England.” They’re just not always that friendly.’

  ‘There’s this fellah in the market gets nasty sometimes,’ said Mr Smith. ‘I just say: “My roots are deeper here than what yours are. Don’t look at my skin. Look at my heart.”’

  ‘That shuts them up,’ said Mr Brown, chuckling. ‘Oooh. That shuts them up good and proper.’

  ‘You see we’re not Britishers,’ said Mr Smith. ‘We’re something different.’

  ‘Of course we sing the British songs: Daisy Daisy ...’

  ‘... Apple Blossom Time ...’

  ‘... When Irish Eyes are Smiling...’

  ‘... Bless Them All ...’

  ‘All the old songs. And we wear the English clothes. Speak the English language. But we’re different. England’s not our home ...’

  ‘... though our people have done very well for themselves over there,’ added Mr Smith proudly. ‘Done better in their exams than the English, some of them.’

  ‘And then there’s that Clifford Richards from Lucknow. Very popular singer at the moment I’m told.’

  ‘I knew his uncle,’ said Mr Smith. ‘Old Pete Webb. A very spiritual man he was. Knew the Bible like he’d written it himself.’

  As we were talking, Mr Brown spotted a large rhesus monkey moving stealthily towards the fruit bowl on the table between us.

  ‘Get on! Out! Bloody animal.’

  Mr Smith heaved himself up from his chair and threw a pebble at the intruder. The monkey loped off, into Mr Brown’s hollyhocks.

  ‘Never trust a monkey. That’s what my father used to say.’

  ‘It’s because of that Hindu temple down the road,’ explained Mr Brown. ‘They’ve started giving their monkeys bananas. Now they all want them.’

  ‘He’s coming back. This fellah’s after something. He’s after these plantains.’

  ‘In British times they used to export the monkeys for laboratory experiments,’ said Mr Brown with a sigh. ‘But they worship them now.’

  Marion and Joe Fowler live in a similar bungalow nearby. They have a front room and a back room, and in the back room stand their two single beds, side by side. On the wall above, hanging from a peg, is a picture of the Queen from The Royal Family Calendar of 1977. Marion sat in the front room in a canary yellow dress clearly modelled on that of her sovereign.

  ‘We got that calendar from UK,’ said Marion. ‘On our visit.’

  ‘Very picturesque is England,’ said Joe. ‘It was our first visit, but we both felt quite at home there.’

  ‘They eat all the food we like. All the recipes we were taught by our parents.’

  ‘Steaks.’

  ‘Old English stew.’

  ‘Mixed fruit pudding. Apple crumble.’

  ‘None of this curry and rice.’

  ‘The dish I like is that Kentucky Fried Chicken,’ said Joe Fowler. ‘It’s a very popular dish over there, that Kentucky Fried Chicken is. A delightful dish.’

  ‘And the shops! Oohl They’ve got everything in the shops in England. Even special food for diabetics ...’

  ‘A diabetic is our Marion.’

  ‘... Diabetic jam. And a variety of diabetic chocolates with soft and hard centres.’

  We talked about their visit to the promised land. Joe and Marion’s eldest daughter Elizabeth moved there in 1973 (‘although of course we called her Betty in those days’). Now she was living in a detached house in Surrey. Two years previously, when she had saved up enough, Elizabeth sent her parents a return ticket with British Airways.

  ‘They treat everyone the same in England. Not like here.’

  ‘Of course we expected it to be a nice place. A little drizzle and rain perhaps but ... nice.’

  ‘Ye oldy England. That’s what they called it in the brochure.’

  ‘But to be honest with you we were a bit surprised to see so many Indians there. After we had our visas refused twice.’

  ‘The second time we applied for citizenship we really thought we’d make it. We were fully prepared to go. Then we had to unpack all over again.’

  ‘All her people and all my people are over there. But when we applied they said: “No. You’re Indians. You have to stay here.”’

  ‘It was that Mrs Thatcher. She never liked the Anglo-Indians. She made it very hard for us. All her rules and regulations.’

  ‘Colour prejudice. That’s what it was. Colour prejudice pure and simple.’

  ‘Yet she let the Indians in.’


  ‘We did feel it about the Indians,’ said Marion. ‘There weren’t so many in Stratford on Avon. Or in Surrey. But in London! There’s more of them on that London Underground than there are in Delhi.’

  ‘When we saw that we felt very let down. They played us dirty, the British. I don’t mind saying that.’

  ‘After they left in 1947 it became very hard for us.’

  ‘It was impossible to find a job. If you did go for a job the Indians would put some high degree of obstacle in your way. We lost all the high positions in the posts and the telegraphs.’

  ‘And the railways.’

  ‘Our status went down. Right down.’

  ‘They should have made provisions for us. We’d served them all our days.’

  ‘We ran their railways and their mines. We sang in their canteens. You’ve probably never heard of Tony Brent, the singer?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You’d be too young,’ said Marion. ‘Tony Brent: “The Singing Engineer” they called him. He had a Wonderful voice, Tony Brent did. He was one of our boys - from Bombay.’

  ‘Very popular was Tony Brent.’

  ‘And handsome! I’d say. Used to give me quite a flutter when I was a girl at Kolar Gold Fields.’

  ‘I was in the Auxiliary Force — like the TA,’ said Joe, changing the subject. ‘Served the British for forty years. A loyal citizen of Her Majesty. Never sympathized with the Congress. Not for one day.’

  ‘And then they give them Indians the visas to run all those ruddy grocery stores - and tell us we must stay here. It doesn’t seem just.’

  Outside darkness had fallen. Joe turned on the bedside light. It was suddenly very cold.

  ‘It was born and bred in us that the British Empire would last for ever. They promised us that they would stay.’

  ‘It was quite a shock in 1947 when they suddenly said they would hand over to the Indians. We never thought they’d do that.’

  ‘Them Indians should have got their freedom. I’m not saying they shouldn’t. They were giving freedom to all sorts of countries. But before the British went, they should have made sure that there was some sort of guarantee we’d be looked after.’